Oracle User Productivity Kit

If you're reading this, I'm sure you know that Oracle UPK allows you to leverage existing content (created in other applications) by attaching the content to the concept pane, bubble hyperlinks, web page hyperlinks, etc. One file type which is often attached to UPK content is Microsoft PowerPoint. Since the UPK Player is launched in a web browser, these PowerPoint attachments are also being launched through the web browser, which can lead to a different user experiences based on the way the user's browser is configured.

Launching Microsoft PowerPoint files in a web browser has inspired a lot of discussions on the internet. These discussions are valuable to those of you who have decided to include Microsoft PowetPoint files in UPK content, so I'd like to share with you a web page which offers a lot of information about this topic:

http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00189.htm -- this web page has a good overview of the various challenges with deploying PowerPoint files through the web browser and the options available to address these challenges.

If you cannot find a viable solution for delivering Microsoft PowerPoint files as UPK attachments, you can always save your presentations as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. While PDF files can also behave differently depending on the user's software and configuration, there seem to be less variables to worry about.

What types of content do you attach in UPK? What challenges have you encountered and how have you resolved them? Let us know in the comments.

Oracle User Productivity Kit 3.5.1 has been available on E-Delivery for a while and I neglected to mention it. While the number of enhancements introduced in UPK 3.5.1 is rather small, the significance of these enhancements is huge. I really should have mentioned it sooner. In addition, there have been two Enablement Service Packs for UPK 3.5.1, so I have included them here as well.

ORACLE USER PRODUCTIVITY PACK 3.5.1
SQLite Database for Client and Single User configurations (replaces the Firebird database)
Installing Client and Single User configurations will be much simpler now that the manual installation of the Firebird database has been removed and replaced with an embedded installation of SQLite database.

Internet Explorer 8 support for Player
The UPK Player can be deployed to end users using Internet Explorer 8. Recording applications in Internet Explorer 8 using SmartMatch and deploying the SmartHelp browser add-in is added in Enablement Service Pack 1 and included in Enablement Service Pack2, as noted below.

Configurable Cache location for Client and Single User configurations
The location of the UPK Developer cache (profile) can be selected during profile creation and subsequently changed while editing a profile. This is helpful for users who have limited space available in their User folder. This adds profiles to Single User configurations and affords customers using Single User configurations to create more than one Library of content.

Recording Support Additions and Updates
- Java 6 Update 12 support added
- Improved recognition for JDE E1 8.98 and 9.0
- Added support for Siebel 8.1.1; context recognition of eModules; and context-sensitivity via SmartHelp for CRM OnDemand (details)

ENABLEMENT SERVICE PACK 1 for UPK 3.5.1
- Support for specific Hyperion products with context-sensitivity via SmartHelp (details)
- Support for Oracle Transportation Management with context-sensitivity via SmartHelp (details)
- Internet Explorer 8 support for recording SmartMatch content and SmartHelp deployment

ENABLEMENT SERVICE PACK 2 for UPK 3.5.1 (includes all items from Enablement Service Pack 1)
- Support for JDE World 4.1C10
- Support for Siebel versions 7.7.2.10, 7.7.2.11, 7.8.2.10, 7.8.2.11, 7.8.2.12, 8.0.0.5, 8.0.0.6, and 8.0.0.7
- Support for SAP 7.10 patch 014 and 6.20 patch 077
(The UPK 3.5.1 What's New document will soon be updated to include the details of Enablement Service Pack 2.)

A few things to note about Enablement Service Packs: The Enablement Service Packs are incremental updates to UPK 3.5.1 and will not install for previous versions. However, Enablement Service Packs include all the features of previously released Enablement Service Packs for that version of UPK. This means that you only need to download and install the latest--in this case, Enablement Service Pack 2. Information on installing Service Packs is included in the product documentation. (Installation & Administration.pdf, p.17; and Content Development.pdf, p.91)

UPK 3.5.1 is now available on E-Delivery while Enablement Service Pack 2 can be found in Metalink. We welcome your comments.

Having used UPK for so long, I often take for granted some of the habits (both good and bad) I've picked up over the years. I recently remembered a few shortcuts that I wanted to share with other UPK authors who work in the Topic Editor, which I've documented here.

Move Around Faster

• Alt + Left Arrow (<--) = Navigates to the previous frame
  
• Alt + Right Arrow (-->) = navigates to the next frame
  
• Alt + Home = navigates to the Introduction frame
  
• Alt + End = navigates to the End frame

Get a Better View of your Screenshots

• Right click drag the screenshot to pan the screenshot.
  
• You can show and hide all property windows using the icon which looks like an empty window. This option can also be found in the View menu. This allows you to see more of the captured screenshot, which is very useful when editing content developed in a screen size equal to or larger than the screen size used for editing.

More Control of Action Areas

• Left double-click the screenshot to define the upper-left corner of the action area
  
• Shift + Left double-click the screenshot to define the lower-right corner of the action area
  
• Control + Left click drag to draw the action area

Tame Bubble Snapping

• When moving a bubble, you can hold down the Control key to avoid "snapping" to the action area in predefined location, allowing you to determine where the bubble connects to the action area.

Other Cool Stuff

• Right double-click the screenshot to bring up a context menu with the options to: Create Action Area or Edit Screenshot

I plan to update this post with a video in the future. There are others which we may cover in future posts. I hope this allows you to further reduce the time you spend editing content. And, if you know of any Topic Editor tips you'd like to share, let us know in the comments.

UPK 3.1 introduced a new feature named Print Outline. This feature allowed authors to export the current view of the active outline to a number of formats: pdf, html, Excel, and various image types. Print Outline was great for sharing information about the content in UPK with users who did not normally use UPK--executive sponsors, for example. However, since this feature was only available in the Outline Editor, this meant the desired data needed to be in an outline (module or section) before it could be exported using Print Outline. If the author wanted to export data from multiple outlines, they would need to create a new outline which contained all the documents they wanted to export.

The more versatile Print feature, introduced in UPK 3.5, can be used in the Outline Editor and the Library. This is an important improvement considering the additional control of Views also introduced in UPK 3.5. Below is an example of how this feature can be used to create reports for UPK:

UPK 3.5 Feature Overview: Print.